The writer is chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis and a senior research fellow at think-tank Bruegel
If the rule for US markets is “Don’t fight the Fed”, the traditional knee-jerk reflex of investors in China is to always heed Beijing. That was underlined after last week’s move by the country’s top economic official to bolster flagging confidence in Chinese markets.
Liu He, vice premier and President Xi Jinping’s close economic adviser, made a rare public intervention to reassure investors. His comments to China’s financial stability and development committee were a long way short of Mario Draghi’s “whatever it takes” speech that turned around the eurozone crisis in 2012. But they had an immediate response.